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Progress with Silvermines hydro-electric plan

Darren Quinn, MD Siga Hydro, Peter Skehan Roadbridge and members of the VAMOS team on site at lower pit.

Darren Quinn, MD Siga Hydro, Peter Skehan Roadbridge and members of the VAMOS team on site at lower pit.

Progress is being made with the plan to build a hydro-electric power plant at a disused mine pit a Magcobar, Silvermines.
The '' research project consortium is partnering with Siga Hydro to conduct site investigations at the Magcobar pit. Beginning this autumn, the project aims to provide valuable scientific data for the proposed hydro-electric pumped-storage facility at the site.

¡VAMOS! represents a pan-European research consortium that has developed new, safe and clean technologies for the extraction of rock, monitoring of environmental conditions and geo-technical investigations in flooded mine sites. The project is funded by the European Commission and includes industrial partners and geo-scientists from across Europe.

Siga Hydro announced plans in early 2016 for a pumped storage hydro electric power station in Silvermines, and it continues to progress and develop the project. The proposed 300MW Silvermines hydro-electric power station is supported by Government policy and is a strategic project of national importance that can enable Ireland to meet its climate change ambitions.

Siga Hydro has commenced the next phase of the project, which will include targeted geo-technical investigations, hydro-geological studies and market analysis to enable the detailed plant design and planning consent stages.

“Working with ¡VAMOS! will enable us leverage the latest technological advancements to complete detailed site investigations, which will in
turn support the plant design and optimisation,” said Darren Quinn, Managing Director, Siga Hydro. “In addition, ¡VAMOS! have a wealth of experience and knowledge gained from working on similar mining sites across the world.”

The ¡VAMOS! innovative technology was previously deployed at a test site the UK where it used an automated underwater vehicle to extract material using a novel LIBS (Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectrometer) technique. Valuable environmental data regarding the conditions at the test site were collected.

The investigations planned for Silvermines will be the last in the series, as the ¡VAMOS! project concludes in January 2019.